‘Don’t worry…it’s a farmhouse we own, no one actually lives here, so we won’t be disturbed.’
For a moment his casual manner almost deceived her, and then, as she turned towards him, she read the cold-blooded intention in his eyes and shrank back from him.
‘David, I think you’ve made a mistake,’ she said as evenly as she could. ‘Please take me home.’
‘Oh, come on.’ How quickly he had changed from the charming young man into this leering threatening stranger. ‘It’s too late to pretend now. And it isn’t as though it’s going to be the first time. Lived with Bennett, did you? Well, he should have taught you a trick or two well worth knowing.’
She reached blindly for the door, but he beat her to it, taking her wrist in a painful grip.
‘David, stop this… I don’t…’
‘Want me?’ he laughed sourly. ‘You will, I promise you. Bennett can’t be that good in bed.’
What she was hearing horrified her, and if she had had any doubts about David’s intentions, these were swiftly banished when he cursed her obscenely under his breath and told her explicitly and graphically just what he expected of her.
It was like a nightmare, and she struggled to hold on to some measure of calm. David couldn’t force her to go into the farmhouse with him. She was safer staying here in the Land Rover. She was long past believing that he was far too civilised to want a woman he had to force into making love with him. She had read in his eyes his determination, and suspected that it sprang as much as anything from a boast made to his cronies that he could do so.
It was a type of male attitude that had always sickened her, and now it frightened her as well. She had read about women being raped by men whom they knew, but she had never, ever expected it to happen her. But it would, if she didn’t do so
mething…
If only she could get David to leave her alone in the Land Rover… She could drive off then and leave him. But how?
There was only one way. Gritting her teeth, she forced a smile. She was going to play a role she had never, ever even envisaged playing, and the whole of the rest of her life would depend upon how successfully she played it.
‘Kyle is good,’ she agreed, trying to sound both coy and promising, closing her mind to the sickening sense of despair eating into her as revulsion for what she was doing hit her.
‘That’s more like it.’ A self-satisfied smile curved the weak mouth. Oh, why hadn’t she listened to Kyle. Why had she allowed her headstrong self-will to overrule his cautioning?
‘Come on, let’s go inside.’
She looked wildly into the dark stretch of ground that lay between them and the house, and then inspiration struck.
‘You go first…it’s dark…it…it scares me.’
She gave a realistic shudder.
‘I’ll turn on the headlights.’
‘Then you’ll have to come back and switch them off… I’m scared of strange places. It’s so remote and…and wild up here. You scare me, too,’ she added softly, sickened by the look of pleasure and gloating darkening his eyes, hating herself for what she was being forced to stoop to.
‘All right…but first I want a taste of what you’ve been giving Bennett.’
He grabbed her before she could stop him, and Heather had to force herself not to push him away. If she fought him now she would lose everything she had been working towards. Even so, her throat tightened and locked against a rising wave of sickness as his mouth fastened over hers. His hands were inside her jacket, rough and unskilled as they touched her breasts.
She endured it for as long as she could, hating the soft sounds of his breathing and the oppressive heat of his body.
‘I’m cold…’ she protested when she couldn’t stand it any longer. ‘Let’s go inside.’
‘Come on, then…’
She shook her head in what she hoped was a coquettish and promising way.
‘No, you go first. I’ll wait until you’ve got the lights on… I’m scared.’
Later, she could only think that it was his monstrous vanity that had saved her; that and the fact that he simply couldn’t imagine that she couldn’t secretly want him, otherwise he would surely never have left her alone.
She waited until he had almost reached the house, straining her eyes to make out his black shadow in an equally deep pool of blackness, before starting the Land Rover engine.